6.
Literar(y)/al Social Commentary I: “Gypsy-as-Nature” in the Early Turkish Republic Era

What
is striking about the comic Ciguli representation on the one hand, and
the dark moral decay of Heavy Roman on the other lies not
in their uniqueness, but their logical consistency with presentations of
similar imagery types. Both image types have been produced and supported
by non-Roman communities in a variety of cultural forms. These
forms play out negative beliefs that are consistent with non-Roman
representations of “çingene” since the late Ottoman and early
Turkish Republic period.

Postcard of "rural (oba) çingene"

Such
proverbial and literary representations of “çingene” lifestyles,
values, gender roles came to stand for and perpetuate outsider’s views
of who the “çingene” are. That is, the consistency in symbolic
representations have created a discursive logic that carried the weight
of a social truth through repetition as well as consistency in
performance. One such domain of representation is evident in the
literary texts that present aestheticised reflections on the perceived
ills of society by projecting romanticized and nostalgic beliefs
about “çingene” on the one hand, and a foil for social disorder
and moral decay on the other. In both extremes, the associative ideas
about “çingene” function as a moral tool implemented as a social
diagnostic.

One
trope is exemplified by writer Ahmet Haşim (b. 1883-1884; d. 1933) in
which “çingene” is linked to nature in opposition to
“civilization” as a moral foil for civilization and its ills. The
romanticized representation of “çingene” in the passage below
encapsulates the perception of “çingene” as human embodiment of
physical nature and temporal change of the seasons.

“The
gypsy is the most beautiful type that remains close to human nature. It
is thought that these uncultivated people with their bronze faces and
porcelain teeth are a merry group of trees that have entered into human
form. The gypsy personifies spring. In my childhood I saw - the ghost of
which remains in my memory today - a singing young gypsy among a
procession of young girls in green, red and yellow şalvar
(loose-fitting pants), singing songs and clapping their hands, the
wooden zurna (folk double-reed aerophone) playing (as) the green
valleys with monotonous echoes resemble the wild laughter of this music”
(Haşim 1989[1928]: 18).

Originally published in 1928, Haşim’s images locate “çingene”
existence as outside of “normal” society and civilization, that is, the
norms and rules according to which these non-Roma intellectuals and
writers are subject. The ideal archetype of this type of “çingene”
is nomadic, living primarily in wild, uncultivated (kır alanı)
rural places. “Çingene” who are seen as representing the romantic
expression of natural existence are described as exemplifying a
relationship close to physical nature (trees, foliage, water), “natural”
temporal order in the change of the seasons, and a state of human
existence removed from “civilizing” social conventions.

The
notion of “çingene” as a personification of unmediated nature is
elaborated in Sabahattin Ali’s short story, The Miller (Değirmenci;
first published 1929). Ali utilizes the vehicle of “gypsy love” (çingene
aşki) and dramatic self-sacrifice mapped on to a force of nature, to
epitomize pure and unmediated love.

“Do
you know what love is, my namesake, have you ever loved?... You can’t
have loved, my namesake, you who live in the city and who live in the
country, you, who submit to one another and who rule one another...You
can’t have loved. Only we know love. We çingenes who wander as
freely as the Western wind and who know no other God than ourselves.
Listen, namesake, let me tell you about the love of a çingene.”
(Ali 1994 [1935]: 12-13).

Sabahattin Ali (b. 1907; d. 1948) was likely to have had close contact
with Roman communities, as he was born in the Greek Thracian town
of Gümülcine (Greek Komotini) and lived in Kırklareli, both towns with
sizable Roman communities. The story is told from the
perspective of a narrator, who, it is revealed halfway through the
story, is a nomadic “çingene” leader, or çeriba{ı. Çeribası is a
historical military category dating from the Ottoman period and also the
term used for the leader of nomadic Roman groups who interfaces
with outsiders (endnote 20). In this story, a member of the group, a
young “çingene” man known as Atmaca (“Hawk”), who is also a
gifted clarinetist, falls in love with the miller’s one-legged non-“çingene”
daughter, upon whose land the group of “çingene” have temporarily
settled. While Atmaca and the non-“çingene” woman profess their
love for each other, she claims that she cannot marry him because she
cannot travel with him as a result of her handicap. We learn of this
through Atmaca’s confession of the hopelessness of his love to our
narrator, the çeribası group leader:

“I
can’t have her, I can’t kidnap her... However, she loves me too. She
told me this yesterday, while crying. ‘Come.’ I said, ‘let’s run away
together. She laughed bitterly. ‘My lord’, she said, ‘I am deficient for
you, are you offering me charity?...’ I told her how much I love her,
‘Isn’t a heart a little more worthy than a leg?’” (Ali 1994 [1935]: 19).

Images of nature (trees, foliage, forests) mingle with forces of nature
(a steadily increasing rainstorm) as the backdrop of the story’s climax.
After this confession, Atmaca gathers his fellow “çingene” band
members at the mill for a musical gathering. As the storm gathers
outside the mill, he plays passionately on his clarinet. At the height
of the storm, he willingly gives his leg to the grinding stone so that
he can be joined together with his beloved, answering his own rhetorical
question at the beginning of the story regarding the ultimate expression
of love.

“So,
my namesake, here is a Çingene story of love. (But) not being able to
tolerate carrying on oneself something that is not found on his
beloved’s body, and to be able to cut it off and throw it way, that, my
namesake, only that is to love” (Ali 1994 [1935]: 24).